How bad would Allied casualties be if the Reich defeated the USSR?

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Re: How bad would Allied casualties be if the Reich defeated the USSR?

#901

Post by Terry Duncan » 06 May 2020, 10:23

Wasnt that the Silver Plate version or something?

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Re: How bad would Allied casualties be if the Reich defeated the USSR?

#902

Post by TheMarcksPlan » 06 May 2020, 10:42

TheMarcksPlan wrote:German aircraft production will be 2.5-3x as high as OTL
Here I'll complete the estimate of total German munitions production that I started upthread.

Earlier I estimated that occupied Europe's contribution to German production would be ~2.6x higher than OTL. viewtopic.php?f=11&t=227341&p=2265206&h ... y#p2265206

I also estimated a 50% delta to domestic German labor force based on demobilization, fewer casualties, and more foreign workers. This is a conservative estimate as the magnitude of additional foreign workers could be significantly greater than the 7mil postulated.
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=227341&p=2265181&h ... s#p2265181

To complete the estimate, let's factor in a dramatic decline in bombing damage and other diminution of production. The "other" category covers the millions of workers diverted from production to damage repair, fire fighting, etc. It also covers the millions of RM spent on building bomb-proofing for factories and other facilities. Also relevant is the forced dispersal of production, which reduced economies of scale and had other deleterious effects. All of these would be greatly reduced ATL given at least a serious blunting of the Combined Bomber Offensive.

Rather than dig into the details of these different components - I don't get much engagement on economic details anyways - let's take a topline conservative estimate of bomb damage/diversion during and say it reduced German production by 25%. This is less than the 30% that Speer estimated on August 3, 1944 in a speech to Gauleiters. Being conservative here leaves us room for residual damage from diminished bombing campaign, if the Wallies persist in that futility.

Now let's add up our deltas from (1) greater domestic German labor force, (2) greater production from occupied territory, and (3) reduced bomb damage/dispersion.

Per the Scherner article cited in my "Occupied Europe" analysis, the breakdown of OTL war production was ~75% in Germany and ~25% in occupied Europe.

For Germany we have:

.75____________*________1.5___________ /___________.75_____________ = 1.5
OTL________________Labor Force Delta_____________ Bomb delta__________Total Germany

For occupied Europe we have:

2.6 * .25 = .65

Sum = 2.15

In other words, German production is 2.15x OTL overall.

Of course this is a rough, high-level analysis that doesn't include many factors. Germany would need to make more investments during '42-'44 to utilize its greater labor and natural resources. This investment delta might slightly exceed the 2.15x delta, requiring it to be adjusted downwards somewhat.

But we also have the fact that Germany isn't going to build 2.15x the Atlantic Wall or any fortifications in the East (In the second half of '43 Germany was pouring monthly 90,000 tons of concrete in the East and 150,000 in the West). In fact, Germany needn't build an Atlantic Wall at all, as it should be welcoming an Allied landing as a donation of PoW's. Given that the French portion of the A-wall cost more than Germany's peak monthly munitions output, it's ballpark ~10% of German munitions expenditure.

In addition, the inefficient autarky programs - primarily synth fuels - can be eliminated or scaled back (either absolutely or as a proportion of the economy) given the flow of Russian and probably Middle Eastern oil. Synth fuel plants consumed 13% of Germany's electricity production; that would be re-purposed to aluminum production in this ATL.

Let's be conservative and say that German peak munitions production in ATL '44 is "only" double its OTL level. I could make an argument for a factor of 2.5x or even 3x, but let's stick with 2x for now.

Now let's look at the combined impact of doubled overall production and a shift away from the Eastern Front battle. For reference, here's a breakdown by category of OTL German production at its 1944 peak:

Image

By value, aircraft were 46.3% of German production at OTL mid-'44 peak.

So if Germany dedicated all of its resources delta to aircraft production, that alone increases production by a factor of 3.15 [ 1.463 / .463 ].

That's even before reapportioning any of the spending on Ostheer production to aircraft production. Cutting the weapons/ammo program in half, and re-allocating to aircraft production, ups the aircraft production factor to 3.55x.

Were Germany to produce 3.15x the planes in ATL June '44 as in ATL, it would build nearly 10,000 fighters per month.

Clearly the B-17/24's and Lancasters are cooked against that production level, as would be the B-29's.
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Re: How bad would Allied casualties be if the Reich defeated the USSR?

#903

Post by TheMarcksPlan » 06 May 2020, 10:47

Glenn239 wrote:The problem is that 4-engine piston driven bombers were obsolescent with the introduction of jet fighters. The fact that the B-29 was bigger, could fly higher and faster did not resolve this inherent vulnerability.
4-engine piston bombers were already obsolete against piston fighters. They only worked when the attacking side had an enormous resource advantage over the defenders. Until the Luftwaffe couldn't train its pilots or protect its airfields, it maintained a ~1-1 attrition ratio of cheap fighters against expensive bombers. That's a war-losing strategy for the attackers if the fight is in vicinity of even. Luckily for us, the fight was not close to even.
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Re: How bad would Allied casualties be if the Reich defeated the USSR?

#904

Post by Takao » 06 May 2020, 13:25

EKB wrote:
06 May 2020, 09:53

Let me get this straight so that we understand each other. Do you claim that humans were safe from a rapid demise by radiation poisoning, as long as they stayed outside your magic 750 meter radius of death?
Hiroshima & Nagasaki were both air bursts, as opposed to Trintity which was essentially a ground burst. Hence, they left a smaller radioactive imprint & produced much less fallout. Japanese readings taken after Hiroshima show radiation levels dropping off rapidly between 750-1000 meters.

If the troops were moving through the blast zone of an air burst. Yes, the radiation absorbed by the body would be minimal, and they would be fine.

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Re: How bad would Allied casualties be if the Reich defeated the USSR?

#905

Post by Politician01 » 06 May 2020, 14:38

Takao wrote:
06 May 2020, 13:25
EKB wrote:
06 May 2020, 09:53

Let me get this straight so that we understand each other. Do you claim that humans were safe from a rapid demise by radiation poisoning, as long as they stayed outside your magic 750 meter radius of death?
Hiroshima & Nagasaki were both air bursts, as opposed to Trintity which was essentially a ground burst. Hence, they left a smaller radioactive imprint & produced much less fallout. Japanese readings taken after Hiroshima show radiation levels dropping off rapidly between 750-1000 meters.

If the troops were moving through the blast zone of an air burst. Yes, the radiation absorbed by the body would be minimal, and they would be fine.
Behold the Anglo Supermen! Marching through radioactivity without any effect on them! I can see now how the Anglo camp here cannot be convinced by the best arguments or logic of a German Victory. Arguments and Logic are no match for the Anglo Supermen!

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Re: How bad would Allied casualties be if the Reich defeated the USSR?

#906

Post by Takao » 06 May 2020, 15:26

It's called research, you might want to try it sometime.

Just look at Chernobyl, which was far worse. And how the citizens were exposed to far more background radiation.

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Re: How bad would Allied casualties be if the Reich defeated the USSR?

#907

Post by Politician01 » 06 May 2020, 16:14

Takao wrote:
06 May 2020, 15:26
It's called research, you might want to try it sometime.
How about posting sources for your claims? You might want to try it sometime. While air burst produce less radiation than ground bursts, it is very hard to find exact numbers on how long an area remains dangerous. From a 15-20 kiloton bomb one can say that there is no danger after a week or so. However if the area is safe just an hour or two after the explosion is doubtful.

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Re: How bad would Allied casualties be if the Reich defeated the USSR?

#908

Post by T. A. Gardner » 06 May 2020, 16:58

Politician01 wrote:
06 May 2020, 16:14
Takao wrote:
06 May 2020, 15:26
It's called research, you might want to try it sometime.
How about posting sources for your claims? You might want to try it sometime. While air burst produce less radiation than ground bursts, it is very hard to find exact numbers on how long an area remains dangerous. From a 15-20 kiloton bomb one can say that there is no danger after a week or so. However if the area is safe just an hour or two after the explosion is doubtful.
This is a rough idea on it, part of my background being Naval Nuclear Power...

Two weeks would be a good number for most of the short-term radioactivity to die off. The only really hot areas created by the bomb would be very close to the explosion itself that were irradiated with neutrons creating secondary radioactivity. Outside this area, the residual non-fissioned material from the bomb would be the big concern. This could be scattered over a considerable area and might create a hot spot or two depending on concentration.

Chernobyl is a poor example to compare this with. There you had a graphite moderated reactor that detonated and burned. The graphite moderator was irradiated and radioactive. The core of the reactor containing tons of highly radioactive material and fission fragments was strewn over several miles around the site creating pretty much a complete hot zone of radioactivity. The radioactive carbon and carbon bonded molecules formed from the fire were like radioactive ash and created much of the problem.
You have none of that from a nuclear bomb burst.

So, if the attackers are not using ground bursts or low air bursts where the fireball touches the ground or craters it, you really don't have a lot of radioactivity in the area after about two weeks. Yes, there will continue to be a low level of radioactivity around the burst site but that is survivable in the short term (eg., weeks or months of occupation). Further out, say half-a-mile or more from the burst site radiation might still be present but it is long term survivable. It'd be no worse than being an a basement with radon gas or getting an x-ray say once a week or so. This would take years and years to show nasty effects.

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Re: How bad would Allied casualties be if the Reich defeated the USSR?

#909

Post by glenn239 » 06 May 2020, 18:04

T. A. Gardner wrote:
06 May 2020, 05:40
The B-29 would make the FW 190 largely impotent as an interceptor. That leaves the more lightly armed Me 109, and aircraft that would be in limited supply like the Me 262 and Ta 152 to intercept. Worse, given that the B-29 is equipped with excellent (for the time) bombing and navigation radar, it could switch to night raids at the same altitude. That would leave the Germans in a real fix since their extant nightfighters and flak would be rendered all but worthless against them.
B-29 as a high altitude night bomber? Doesn't sound like a war winning weapon to me. Sounds more like a less accurate, more expensive, more combustible version of a Lancaster. Also, why can't the Germans build high-altitude night jet fighters? The AR-234, for example?
Correct. the B-17 generally flew up to about 25,000 feet operationally. Going above that was difficult to achieve. The B-17 wasn't vulnerable because it wasn't flying high enough to need pressurization as a prerequisite for that altitude. That's why the B-29 was designed to be pressurized. The competing B-32 Devastator was supposed to be pressurized but Convair couldn't get it to work on their design.
You kind of skipped over the part about what happens if a B-29 is depressurized at 33,000 feet. Do you suppose that if a B-29 is torn open at 35,000 feet their crew is going to discuss the merits or lack thereof of the B-32 Devastator? You keep saying that high altitude is the ticket, but it seems to me that any bomber operating at that altitude is actually far more fragile than a B-17.
This is clearly not true. While one hit could bring a large bomber down, it is far more likely that it will take several. Hitting the plane alone without causing critical structure or control failure will create massive damage, but it won't ensure a shootdown. There are plenty of pictures and accounts of bombers hit directly by flak rounds, etc., that demonstrate that a 55mm warhead isn't a certainty for a one-shot, one-kill.

One hit from an R4 would stand a decent chance of taking out a B-29. This is the idea, that the B-29 isn't a tougher aircraft than the B-17. Relative to the weapons it was facing, it was actually far weaker than the B-17 it was replacing. That's why the 4-engine piston bomber went extinct after WW2. They were obsolete.
Why couldn't it when the attacking plane is spotted? British bombers, fully loaded executed corkscrews frequently and it was highly effective in preventing a nightfighter from getting into gunnery position. Here, the B-29 (or other bomber) sees an attacking aircraft closing with it and begins a corkscrew. Now the attacking fighter has to try and target a maneuvering aircraft. It makes accurate fire far more difficult.
British bombers weren't flying at 35,000 feet. The air is really thin. I doubt a heavy B-29 could do anything except fly in pretty much a straight line if fully loaded and that high.

Not necessarily. German fuel production is such that even going full tilt they can't make enough to put a large air force in service and keep it flying daily. Even in the BoB fuel was an issue and German production was intact in 1940. The same thing here. Jets are very thirsty aircraft. Germany has limited access to fuel--even with the eventual adding of Soviet production to some extent-- and they simply won't have enough for a large fleet of jets to fly all the time.
Agreed. Fuel production is definitely the German weakness here. I did a bit of googling on the numbers Rich posted yesterday, and the effect of the bombing on fuel production was even worse than I'd remembered before joining this discussion.
A better solution for the Germans is to develop a workable SAM, but that is likely going to take them into the 50's simply because they don't have a workable targeting and control system available, and aren't even close in 1945. Add to that that the missiles they were experimenting with were mostly crap and this becomes a problem. But, a working SAM would be a good solution. It avoids the fuel issue. It avoids pilot training issues. It would work better than flak guns on higher flying, faster aircraft. It's cheaper than building lots of airplanes. So, the reasons for doing it are there, it's the lack of technology and engineering that's holding them up.
No, for several reasons. First, if the Germans are out of gas they've lost the war. Second, SAM's are fixed position assets and vulnerable to ECM. They weren't going to be a panacea. Third, the Be-349 was entering operational service and, for that particular period in time and against wallowing 4-engine cows in daylight, would have proven very effective. Even more so if an air launched version entered service.

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Re: How bad would Allied casualties be if the Reich defeated the USSR?

#910

Post by Tom from Cornwall » 06 May 2020, 18:10

TheMarcksPlan wrote:
06 May 2020, 10:42
I also estimated a 50% delta to domestic German labor force based on demobilization, fewer casualties, and more foreign workers. This is a conservative estimate as the magnitude of additional foreign workers could be significantly greater than the 7mil postulated.
Do you concede that there is a tension between your "estimation" of a possible increase of the level of extraction that the genocidal Nazi regime can achieve from its occupation of Europe and a section of the Soviet Union and your parallel "estimation" of the level of slave labour that can also be extracted from those areas?

As an example of my contention that your analysis is much too simplistic, Mark Mazower (Hitler's Empire, p.261) states that 'By 1943 more than half the French workforce was employed for the German war effort, and more than one-third of its national income was being siphoned off for German benefit'. As attempts were made to extract more slave labour from France for work in Germany, Mazower shows (pp.301-303) how French protests about the impact of losing labour (some into hiding and some to the resistance) were sufficient to force the Germans to exempt French workers working for enterprises supplying Germany from increasingly desperate and coercive forced labour demands. By March 1944, this accounted for some 1.3 million workers in France alone, according to head of Nazi slave labour acquisition Sauckel. As the number of French (or Belgian, Dutch, Czech, etc) slave labourers in Germany increased isn't it axiomatic that the national income of those countries would diminish?

Mazower also rightly calls attention (p.293) to the fact that 'a purely economic analysis [Tom: of the genocidal Nazi state's economic policies] misses the all-important ideological dimension to the Third Reich's management of the war economy'. For the importance of this point, it is surely sufficient to simply point to Nazi policy in the historically occupied areas of the Soviet Union. Michael Burleigh points out, for example, (The Third Reich: A New History, p.546) that although 'some marginal elements in the German regime and the military advocated more pragmatic policies in the Soviet Union, the dominant plans and practice were based on murder and gross exploitation'.

A more successful Nazi Germany was surely unlikely to lessen the hideous nature of its genocidal policy in the occupied Soviet Union? One has only to look at some of the recorded historical events to understand that. For example, as Burleigh notes (p.548).
Since the fields shimmering with wheat of Hitler’s imagining proved chimerical, German economic experts, notably State Secretary Herbet Backe, developed the simple expedient of starving millions of Russians by diverting food to the military and the German home front.
And those are the same Russians who in reality could have produced an output for the Nazi state and who, in your "estimation" could have been coerced more ruthlessly into working for the Nazi state in Germany itself. Given putative extraction of more Russians, who would have been left to gather in the harvest or dig out the coal? Perhaps that is one reason why (Burleigh, p.545):
Whereas pre-war annual Soviet coal production in the Donets Basin was 90 million tonnes, only 4.1 million tonnes were mined throughout the entire German occupation. Similarly, the iron ore mines of Kriwoi Rog produced about 12 per cent of what had been achieved under Soviet administration.
Given the appalling treatment of the slave labourers from the eastern territories, isn't it also likely that a more (a hideous thought) "victorious" genocidal Nazi state would have exterminated more quickly the labour that it might later need. Isn't that actually what happened in reality?

There is of course also the Nazi policy of "extermination by labour" but, like much of the argument in this thread, that is a subject best reserved for the "Holocaust and 20th Century War Crimes" section of this forum.

In fact the genocidal nature of the Nazi regime and it's economic policies makes statements like this [from TMP's post 786] truly disturbing:
TMP wrote:

Food production would increase from greater territorial acquisitions and stability within Ukraine and Southern Russia

[and]

German recruitment of foreign labor didn't become systematic until after the appointment of Fritz Sauckel as labor plenipotentiary in early '42
Stability by starvation and extermination? Are you really advocating the "Backe option" or some mythical hearts and minds campaign?

Amended to add: Is that what you meant by:
Foreign labor recruitment and retention will, therefore, be easier than OTL (even if still requiring unconventional tactics?).
Sauckel's "recruitment" wasn't "systematic" or "unconventional" either - it was often brutal, chaotic, genocidal and (thankfully) counter-productive.

Tom

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Re: How bad would Allied casualties be if the Reich defeated the USSR?

#911

Post by glenn239 » 06 May 2020, 18:28

TheMarcksPlan wrote:
06 May 2020, 10:47
Glenn239 wrote:The problem is that 4-engine piston driven bombers were obsolescent with the introduction of jet fighters. The fact that the B-29 was bigger, could fly higher and faster did not resolve this inherent vulnerability.
4-engine piston bombers were already obsolete against piston fighters. They only worked when the attacking side had an enormous resource advantage over the defenders. Until the Luftwaffe couldn't train its pilots or protect its airfields, it maintained a ~1-1 attrition ratio of cheap fighters against expensive bombers. That's a war-losing strategy for the attackers if the fight is in vicinity of even. Luckily for us, the fight was not close to even.
The talk of A-bombs and genocide is complete nonsense, but Rich's point on oil production loss I find compelling. How does Germany protect its oil production in this AH?

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Re: How bad would Allied casualties be if the Reich defeated the USSR?

#912

Post by Politician01 » 06 May 2020, 18:45

glenn239 wrote:
06 May 2020, 18:28
TheMarcksPlan wrote:
06 May 2020, 10:47
Glenn239 wrote:The problem is that 4-engine piston driven bombers were obsolescent with the introduction of jet fighters. The fact that the B-29 was bigger, could fly higher and faster did not resolve this inherent vulnerability.
4-engine piston bombers were already obsolete against piston fighters. They only worked when the attacking side had an enormous resource advantage over the defenders. Until the Luftwaffe couldn't train its pilots or protect its airfields, it maintained a ~1-1 attrition ratio of cheap fighters against expensive bombers. That's a war-losing strategy for the attackers if the fight is in vicinity of even. Luckily for us, the fight was not close to even.
The talk of A-bombs and genocide is complete nonsense, but Rich's point on oil production loss I find compelling. How does Germany protect its oil production in this AH?
1. The Germans save a LOT of fuel from not fighting the Soviets
2. With Germany concentrating on Flak and fighters and 262 and R4M most Allies attacks would be as ineffective as this
one:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Tidal_Wave

53 Bombers destroyed and 55 damaged out of 177 - for the price of 2 Romanian and 5 German Aircraft. The mission resulted in "no curtailment of overall product output." Most of the damage was repaired within weeks, after which the net output of fuel was greater than before the raid.

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Re: How bad would Allied casualties be if the Reich defeated the USSR?

#913

Post by Michael Kenny » 06 May 2020, 18:56

glenn239 wrote:
06 May 2020, 18:04
Also, why can't the Germans build high-altitude night jet fighters? The AR-234, for example?
Countered by the Allies building a super-high altitude B29.

If you can create solutions out of thin air then so can I.

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Re: How bad would Allied casualties be if the Reich defeated the USSR?

#914

Post by Michael Kenny » 06 May 2020, 18:59

glenn239 wrote:
06 May 2020, 18:28


The talk of A-bombs and genocide is complete nonsense,
Whilst the formed might be correct the latter certainly is not. Look up 'The Final Solution'

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Re: How bad would Allied casualties be if the Reich defeated the USSR?

#915

Post by Michael Kenny » 06 May 2020, 19:06

Politician01 wrote:
06 May 2020, 18:45

With Germany concentrating on Flak and fighters and 262 and R4M most Allies attacks would be as ineffective as this
one:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Tidal_Wave
Standard delusionist tactic. Use the worst Allied performance to measure their effectiveness but take an unproven German prototype/concept/wet Dream that used carrots as a fuel and transform it into a fully-working fault-free wunder-waffen with a production run of 100,000. .
GIGO.

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